Daphne hardly knew what to say, for she, too, had difficulty reconciling the loving father of her childhood memories with the hardened gambler who had left his wife and daughter penniless.
“But do not despair,” her mother continued on a more positive note. “If Sir Valerian has not yet thought of marriage with you, I’m sure he will have only to see you in your proper rôle to be captivated.”
“My ‘proper rôle, Mama?” Daphne echoed, one dimple peeping. “A gathering of mill workers and their families?”
“Do not be impertinent, miss! You know very well what I meant. I daresay Sir Valerian may host similar gatherings for his constituents, and he needs to see that you are capable of planning such things.”
“I think the men are doing all the planning, Mama,” Daphne said, recalling certain things that Theo had let fall.
“Never mind that!” Mrs. Drinkard waved away this detail with a dismissive gesture that caused Daphne to duck out of range of the knife. “You must bring your dress down from the attic, my dear, and hang it up so that any wrinkles may fall out. I wish we might bring it down to the kitchen to steam them out, but we can’t have you going to the dance reeking of garlic and onions.”
“No, indeed!” exclaimed Daphne, laughing. “Although it would certainly inspire Sir Valerian to make me an offer—to serve as his cook.”
“Pray do not even joke about such a thing!” Setting aside her knife, Mrs. Drinkard transferred the slices of bread to a basket lined with a checkered cloth, folded the ends of the cloth over the bread to keep it warm, and handed the whole to Daphne. “Set this on the table, my dear, and then you may go up and change. As for the dance”—she sighed—“we shall have to wait and see what happens.”
“ ’OW’D YOU LIKE TO go back ’ome for a bit, love?” Sir Ethan Brundy inquired of his spouse upon his return from his club, where he had been meeting with the principal advisors in his Parliamentary campaign.
“Ethan!” Lady Helen exclaimed, rising from her place on the sofa to greet him with a kiss. “Are you burying me in the country again?”
The joke was an old and oft-repeated one, for Lady Helen had long since discovered that the pleasures of hearth and home were, in their own quiet way, equal—and sometimes superior—to the gaieties of Town.
“Not if you think it’s too soon,” her husband assured her, glancing down at their son, who sat on the rug drawing in a sketch pad with a blue crayon. “Can Willie travel yet, do you think?”
“The doctor says there is no reason why he should not do so, provided we wrap him up well, for he is much improved.”
This much was certainly true. In fact, the purchase of the sketch pad and crayons with which he was presently employed had been a desperate attempt on her part to give him some more suitable occupation than chasing the kitchen cat (in an attempt to grab its tail) or thrusting his head up the chimney (in order, as he explained to his sorely tried mama, to see what was there). Master William Brundy, apparently feeling their eyes upon him, judged it time to present them with the fruit of his labor: a misshapen circle with eyes, nose, and a smiling mouth, from which sticklike arms and legs sprouted without such apparent superfluities as a neck or a torso. This, he informed his bemused parents, depicted his papa.
“And a fine, ’andsome fellow I am,” declared Sir Ethan without a blink, considering this highly unflattering likeness with every appearance of satisfaction. “What do you think, Willie? Would you like to go back to Lancashire?”
Willie pondered this question for a long moment before asking, “Is Charley there?”
“Aye, Charley’s in Lancashire, along with Nurse and your sisters.”
Sketch pad and crayon were cast aside at this news of his twin. “I wanna see Charley!” shrieked Willie as he leaped to his feet, ready to depart on the instant.
“I confess, I have missed the other children,” Lady Helen said. “But what of your debate with Sir Valerian? Was it not this Saturday?”
“ ’e’s canceled it,” her husband informed her, bending to scoop his son up in his arms.
“Canceled it? Why should he do such a thing?”
Sir Ethan shrugged. “No idea. Per’aps ’e’s sure enough of his position to believe ’e doesn’t need it.”
Lady Helen’s bosom swelled in indignation. “Well! If that’s what he thinks—”
“ ’e’s welcome to think whatever ’e likes—especially if it means we can go back ’ome and rest up for a few days before the next round of dinners and speeches,” put in Sir Ethan.
“I see your point,” conceded Lady Helen with a sigh. “It has been rather exhausting, hasn’t it? And that in spite of the fact that our schedule has been greatly reduced since Papa died! When I think how I was used to attend three events in the same night, it quite sinks my spirits! I must be growing old.”
“I’d thought we might leave in the morning and stop for the night in Leicester. We could be there by Friday night—unless you’d rather go at a slower pace, decrepit as you are.”
She smiled at that, but refused to take the bait. “It might be best to take a slower pace for Willie’s sake.”
“We can take three days, then, stopping at Olney and Stafford instead,” he suggested. “That would put us there shortly after nightfall on Saturday. ’ow’s that?”
“Better,” she pronounced, nodding as she rose from her seat on the sofa. “It would allow us
